“As is consistently recognized in civil rights cases, the desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of students.”[1]
A chilling quote from the letter sent from the Justice Department to all the school districts in the United States. It is the letter that represents a monumental day in my mind: the day the music died.
If you don’t know what I’m referring to, “The Obama administration [has issued] a sweeping directive telling every public school district in the country to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that match their gender identity.”[2] The directive isn’t a law, but it has the effect of law in that financial and legal punishments can be distributed to any school that does not comply.
On this day, May 13, 2016, the Obama administration made it undeniably clear that President Obama is not the head of a single branch of government inside a democratic republic, he is a fascist dictator. No that is not too strong a term. A dictator is a person in a position of authority that dictates (tells) his will or the will of a faction to the whole of a country and enforces that will upon the whole country by any means he can. Fascism is an authoritarian system of government where contrary views are not tolerated.
President Obama can’t dodge this one. In the past when he has abused the power of the executive order, there was enough wiggle room in the order and turmoil in the country that he could get away with only a few news outlets calling it what it was.
There’s no wiggle room this time. There are no dead kids to blame or terrorists to insist we kill. This is pure fascism. This is one small group of people enforcing their will on the whole.
The whole bathroom debate, up until now, has made me more annoyed than anything else. I didn’t really care when Target said they were making gender-neutral bathrooms. I could deal because I am an adult and I believe Target has the right to do whatever they want with their bathrooms. Nobody forces me to go to Target.
That apathy does not transfer to the US government, and it doesn’t transfer to children.
Parents are the responsible party for training up children in truth and godliness, and the federal government’s jurisdiction extends through the whole country; I can’t not go to the United States of America… I’m already there. The federal government isn’t responsible for raising the children of this nation… parents are. That means the status quo has changed with this directive to enforce a particular view on all the public schools in the nation. The moral revolution is taking hold and it’s taking hold in the next generation, by force.
But that first quote is the one that should scare us. Set aside the fact that it clearly implicitly equates the LGBTQIAPK movement with the civil rights movement (it’s not a civil rights movement). But the second half of the quote is scary. “The desire to accommodate others’ discomforts cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of student.” This is an un-winnable, self defeating statement because of the point it’s trying to make.
What the writer of this statement actually means is, “The desire to accommodate (heterosexual conservatives who don’t want their children sharing restrooms/locker-rooms with children of the opposite sex) cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages (sexually confused/transgender students).”
Unfortunately, the writer didn’t use those words. He or she used more ambiguous ones, and these words can easily be used to argue for the exact opposite directive from the one being supported. Suppose the “others’ being accommodated” is the transgender community, and the “particular class of student” is every heterosexual girl who suffers emotional anguish from the boys who are now legally allowed to watch them undress. If these are the parties in mind, the directive would have to enact the exact opposite policy from the one for which it currently advocates.
The full letter can be read here. Bible-believing Christians should be scared while reading the almost innumerable faulty assumptions in this letter.
What assumptions? Assumptions such as those on the terminology page, which explains that a gender is “assigned” at birth, in much the same way a name is assigned. Evidently, “male” “female” “John” “Janet” and “Joey” all carry the same amount of meaning and link to reality: none. They are just words on a birth certificate in the mind of justice department; they don’t mean anything in an objective or true sense.
Or the assumption that “Schools have a responsibility to provide a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for all students.” Really? What are grades then? Do they not discriminate between students who get answers right and those who get them wrong? What are advanced classes? What about first chair in band, and lead roles in school plays? What about the discriminatory act of making one player quarterback and others linemen? Or in moral terms, what about the student who identifies as an emotional extortionist, or one who identifies as a drug dealer, or one who identifies as a thief? Will schools not discriminate against those students when they break moral boundaries with their “identity”?
Discrimination is not inherently bad, and it’s not the job of the schools to eliminate all discrimination. Morality is an objective standard that should be enforced, and often discriminating is the moral thing to do. The five-foot white male student should not be affirmed in believing he is a six-foot Chinese woman.
The truth is that a particular agenda is being pushed with this letter/directive from the Obama administration, and now it officially comes from the federal government on public schools, and no arguments will be entertained by the Justice Department to refute that agenda.
To put it in terms that the nerds will understand: They are the borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. Your culture will adapt to service them. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
That is the message our executive branch has adopted, and we the people have allowed them to adopt it. We left the constitution back when FDR first decided he had to make America great again. He expanded the role of the president, and now the president has taken the role of emperor. He is judge, jury, and executioner. This is the day the music called “the American Constitutional Experiment” died. Good-bye democratic republic; hello fascism.
I’m reminded of another man who rose to power, and slowly but surely took the powers associated with the title Caesar. It wasn’t long before Christians had to make the choice to “Hail Caesar” or “die in a society hailing Jesus as Messiah.”[3]
Mark my words, the days are not far off when Christians will be faced with the same choice.
Will we stand on the inerrant word of God and say, “In the image of God, He created them; male and female He created them,” or will we acquiesce, compromise, and assimilate?
Will you hail Caesar, or will you hail Jesus, as Lord?
What cost are you willing to pay for that proclamation?
Your home?
Your bank account?
Your liberty?
Your family?
Your life?
These questions are no longer theoretical. They are ever increasingly present realities. Today, the music died. We don’t live in a republic anymore; we live in a dictatorship.
The song from which the title of this post is drawn continues in the final verse, “In the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed, but not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken.”[4]
The church bells are broken my friends. Our churches care more about “social justice,” having your best life now, and building projects than they do about preaching the gospel. We lost the message of hope, and it’s the only hope we have.
The only solace any of us have in light of this story, in light of the reality of a sinful world, is that our hope does not rest in the systems of this sinful world. We have a hope for a future resurrection. A day will come when the trumpet will sound, the dead will rise, and Christ will reign on earth. A day will come when those who believed in the Lord, Jesus the Christ, those whose names are written in the book of life, will be saved from hell and enter the New Jerusalem. A day will come when we will taste the fruit of the tree of life.
Until then, fight the good fight, finish the race, and keep the faith. Preach the gospel in season and out of season. Love your neighbor to the point of death, and pray that they may repent and believe the gospel that Christ died to save them from their sins. That is the only hope this world ever had to begin with.
Until then, smile with the knowledge that the worst they can do is kill you, and Christ’s resurrection has made that prospect decidedly less distressing.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/us/politics/obama-administration-to-issue-decree-on-transgender-access-to-school-restrooms.html?_r=0
[2] Ibid.
[3] Beautiful Eulogy reference.
[4] From the final verse of the song “American Pie” by Don McLean.